The green light flickered again and Solas, bruised and battered and ego-depleted, stood up from the ground and felt every vein and every muscle in his body rise jubilant.All this plotting to get to the ruined temples, to manipulate humans to assist him, to have humans fight off demons while he searched for the orb…it was all for nothing.

The orb's magic was in Haven. It was there all along.

He took a few tentative steps, observing his power as it bubbled out of another's body, like a caged animal trying to escape. It hissed and sparked. It was strong and feral, he almost felt scared to touch he was soon bending over it, fingers hovering over the bubbling core.

It is mine once more!

He opened his palms over it and started feeding it his mana to entice it. Silver-blue energy trickled like blood from his palm to the other palm. White tendrils rose up from the unmoving hand, searching for the succor he was feeding it.

Yes, come to me… This is the mana that you sustained and which sustained you. You have been abandoned for millennia. You are sundered no more.

He felt the familiar surge of power the moment the white tendrils connected to him.

It only lasted a heartbeat.

The connection exploded. Solas was thrown back. When he recovered, his arm seared with pain. A gash, arcane in source, had torn it open, and he was leaking life-force from wrist to elbow.

The dwarf grunted next to him, shaking his head. They looked at each other for a second.

"Well, shit," the dwarf said.

No, he would try again-he must!

The other person bearing his orb-power was thrown off the bedroll. Breathing or not, Solas no longer cared. No mortal could hold this much ancient elven power and live. No use prolonging their agony. And no use waiting when there's a world that needs saving.

Solas placed his hands over the crackling green power again. He channeled mana to his hands once more, a bigger pool this time, but controlled its flow to one hand—the wounded one—so he could channel the rising orb-power through his other hand. Like a circuit begging to be closed.

Tendrils formed once again, crystal-white and hungrily searching. He lowered his uninjured arm and positioned it over the one trickling silver-blue mana. The core of the orb-power snapped and slithered, green and growling. The white tendrils connected.

It felt…different. The citrus-sour sting of elfroot, bright burst of jasmine, thick honey under the tongue. This is wrong, it doesn't fit. It tasted like someone else's blood seeping out of his gums, staining his teeth. It wasn't his.

The other person—an elven woman?—flopped like a fish on its last breath.

No. This was hers.

He was cannibalizing her magic.

A sudden urge to hurl seized him. He fought it down. Realization hit him like lightning.

The power of the orb will no longer obey him, so long as another body owns it. His power lives on her like a parasite too dangerous to extract. Like a stubborn pet unwilling to return to its master.

With no other recourse, Solas willed his mana to take a different shape. This ritual, he remembers. He wept the last time he performed it. It was a necessary ritual yet it still tasted like ashes and grief.

Solas concentrated his magic and focused it to push the wild raw power deep into its new host. The white tendrils embraced the flailing green, crazed in its confusion. The white and the green seeped back into the woman's body, like rainwater on fertile soil. White, green, and silver blue light soon dissipated.

He sealed it with the rest of his mana. It will not be confused any longer. It now belongs to a new master.

The ritual ended with the woman gasping for air and Solas retching from the poison of stolen mana and magic. Everything he forced himself to eat that morning spilled in a hot mess on the floor.

Wiping his mouth, Solas waited for the woman's chest to rise and fall with breathing. Only when it finally did did he allow his body to crash on the floor.

He took a deep shaky breath that woke up his body to its new reality.

For the first time since uthenera, he felt truly and irrevocably orphaned from his People. He is utterly alone now. The last of the freedom fighters and liberated slaves. The last of the undying elves. The way home is lost, swallowed by darkness. The path before him, erased. He is sundered and separated from the hope of the Fade reuniting with the world.

He tasted his own tears and blood and sick in his mouth, and the ashes of hundreds of thousands of lives lost smoldered on his tongue.